


The Hunt is on

by hobgoblin123



Category: Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman
Genre: Anal Sex, Established Relationship, M/M, Mind Control, Rape, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:53:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4711697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobgoblin123/pseuds/hobgoblin123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love's never easy, in particular if you're in love with Gerald Tarrant aka Hawthorne, and Damien has to face a terrible truth...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the Coldfire Trilogy, and no profit whatsoever is intended.
> 
> Quotes: 'There are no innocents' is from BSR, page 153. 'I sold my soul for knowledge', on the other hand, is a quote from WTNF, p. 352.
> 
> A/N 1: This story was already posted on fanfiction. net in 2011/2, but is currently undergoing some heavy editing.
> 
> A/N 2: I don't have a clue whether the faeborn really can't enter holy ground, but I suppose it depends on the convictions of the people whose minds spawned them. If you believe with all your heart that a demon can't trespass a church as many of us do, it should be incapable of doing so. At least on Erna.

Running as fast as Vryce's trembling legs would carry him, the dingy streets of one of Jaggonath's meaner areas passed him by in a blur. Salty drops of sweat burned his eyes, and in spite of the rather cool spring evening his clothes stuck to his body like a second skin while his breath came in choking sobs, his lungs burning as if scorched by the toxic fumes rising from the infernal depths of Mount Shaitan.

In a desperate attempt to clear his mind, he shook his head like a horse trying to chase away some irksome flies. Why the hell was he thinking of the most infamous volcano on the Eastern continent? As far as he was concerned, it wasn't a very scenic spot and no place he would care to visit, not even in his nightmares.

But he had dreamed of it, hadn't he? Concentrating very hard on the fleeting images his subconscious seemed to mock him with, he saw a landscape that could have been transferred to the surface of Erna from the abysses of hell before his inner eye, remembered floating silvery shadows utterly alien to the mortal plane, a tall figure in flowing robes collapsing in a heap at the crater's edge and a feeling of personal loss and grief so intense that he had wept in his dream like a lost child.

 _Danger_! A surge of immediate terror hit him without warning, stopping any attempts at analysing the situation, and he nearly tripped over his own feet. A faceless threat so ghastly and vile, so corrupted to its very core was lurking on him that his soul recoiled from it in horror.

Although he felt like a walking target, his state of utter exhaustion forced him to slow down to a fast trot. As his eyes frantically darted around in search of a safe hiding place, the tiny part of his brain that hadn't already drowned in the visceral fear raging through him like a wildfire struggled to the surface with a vengeance. For a short moment he couldn't help but wondering why he was acting so out of character, turning tail and run like a scared rabbit instead of fighting it out and to hell with the consequences, but the thought triggered a wave of dizziness so intense that he had to lean against the next available wall for support.

Panting for dear life, the warrior knight tried to catch his breath. After his blurred vision had cleared a bit, he realized that the miserable shacks had given way to more spacious buildings, the dwellings of the affluent citizens of Jaggonath. Maybe one of the elegant premises would provide him with the dearly needed shelter from the unknown escapee from the pits of hell that was haunting him, a secure haven to rest his body and recover his wits.

Vryce wiped the sweat from his face and scanned his surroundings. The masonry who had served to hold him upright belonged to a dignified villa. Unlike its neighbours, it lacked the pretentious splendours of stucco and garish mural paintings, but it was beyond question that it would fetch a considerable sum on the real estate market. Maybe even more so due to the absence of all the knick-knack so very much en vogue with the upstarts.

Registering the lack of a nameplate and that no light was shining through the windows, he sighed with relief. An uninhabited house was exactly what he needed. He might be in mortal danger and on his last legs, but bringing harm to innocent people by his mere presence was anathema to everything he believed in, a principle that the loss of his vocation hadn't changed in the least.

 _'There are no innocents'_. The words floated through his mind as gently as a baby's breath in spite of their appalling message, and Damien shivered. He remembered the voice so clearly, smooth and silky but underlined with a cold, deadly malevolence that made his skin crawl. It belonged to a man, of that he was sure, but try as he might he could remember neither the face nor the name of its owner, and when he tried to force the memory with all his might and main, he was struck by another wave of nauseating vertigo which didn't allow for coherent thought.

The bile rising in his throat, the former priest leaned against the wall again and blinked like a not owl. Being a healer, he recognized his symptoms as the typical warning signs of a threatening physical collapse, and he realized that he had to make a choice quickly. Although quite proficient in both man-to-man and man-to-faeborn combat, battling a nasty high-order demon or even one of the numerous thugs who were roaming the streets at night was out of the question in his current condition, not to mention facing a whole horde of either of them.

Vryce pondered his options. He could still try to make it to the next church, holy ground and thus out of bounds for the faeborn since times long forgotten, but he felt inexplicably drawn to the building behind him which seemed to promise him safety. His conscious mind overwhelmed by a compelling lure that somehow was no stranger to him, he pushed the massive alteroak door open, much too winded and dazed to ask himself why it hadn't been locked in the first place.

Stumbling over the threshold, he was greeted by silence and darkness, and for a while he was reduced to groping his way like a blind man with his arms outstretched until his eyes had adjusted to the miserable lightning conditions. When he was finally able to recognize at least part of his surroundings, Damien bit back a heartfelt curse. Very much to his dismay, the villa evidently wasn't deserted at all. The long corridor led to a spacious study which was tastefully furnished with a mixture of exquisite antiques and stylish modern furniture, but literally overflowed with books. Thousands of them, for the most part ancient and doubtlessly almost priceless, filled the long rows of shelves covering every wall, and even the huge novebony desk was littered with stacks of notes, newspapers and leather-bound volumes. It was a bibliophile's wet dream.

Evidently, he had invaded the home of a scholar who was devoting his life to the pursuit of knowledge, a thought that somehow struck a chord with him. In spite of his disorientation, he still harboured a dim memory that he had known the epitome of such a man once, had admired his unquenchable thirst for broadening his horizon no matter what in spite of their natural enmity. But try as he might to get his grey matter going, just as before there was no face to accompany the light tenor whispering 'I sold my soul for knowledge', just a sensation of utter helplessness and frustration that twisted his insides into a tight knot.

The warrior knight shuddered. The voice had sounded so real, so frighteningly familiar, but during his extensive travels at the behest of the Church he had never stayed long enough at one and the same place to make friends, and most certainly none of his comrades in the Order of the Golden Flame had told him he had bartered his soul to the Forces of the Dark, for whatever purpose. Nothing that abysmal had happened in the Order's history since the lamentable fall of the Prophet more than nine hundred years ago. Maybe he was simply going crazy, losing his ability to divide between reality and illusion, but yet…

Struck by the next wave of mind-blowing terror out of the blue, Damien's knees buckled, and he landed face first on the precious silk rug worthy to grace a king's audience chamber. When he was coming to his senses again at long last, he found himself on his right side, his knees drawn up to his chest and his own whimpers still ringing in his ears. He was shaking so badly that getting up proved to be an impossible task for the time being, and so he crawled back into the corridor on all fours and from there towards a plain wooden giving access to the basement stairs. _'Come to me, Vryce. I'm waiting for you,'_ the very same voice that had been haunting him for hours seemed to chuckle inside his head now, and he obeyed to the command without so much as a whiff of protest. Summoning up his last reserves of strength, he managed to struggle to his feet and started his descend into the blackness below.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reviewing and leaving kudos, Dragonflower1! I'm glad you liked it so far. Although this is just a revision of an older story of mine, it might take me quite a while to post the following chapters because of a lamentable lack of spare time. I hope you don't mind the delay.

Downstairs, Damien found himself in a lightless, claustrophobic space. Muttering a vicious curse under his breath, he groped his way along the wall until his searching fingers touched a piece of metal.

When the door opened with a somewhat sinister creaking, he couldn't quite suppress a shocked gasp. The unbelievable scenario in the adjoining, much more spacious chamber seemed to have arisen either from the twisted mind of a human being who had left the realms of sanity long ago, or a particularly nasty demonling had put his idea of an ideal playground for whatever unspeakable acts he intended to commit on his mortal prey into action.

Meter by meter of obsidian coloured velvet shrouded the walls and created a surreal, nightmarish atmosphere only heightened by the sea of flickering candles reflecting in the black numarble floor. The overall effect was frightening, to say the least, but what really gave him some food for thought were the cuffs dangling  threateningly from the posts of the imposing canopy bed placed right in the centre of the room. That, and the collection of whips and other gruelling torture instruments he could vaguely recognize in the background.

For a drawn-out moment, he couldn't help but stare at the incredible scene in wide-eyed disbelief, but eventually his survival instincts kicked in, and he whirled around, dead set on making a bolt for it while he still could.

"Don't you dare to run, priest! "

Vryce froze dead in his tracks. A trap! Like a bloody rookie he had walked into a trap, apparently prepared exclusively for his benefit. Shocked out of his wits, he didn't dare to move a limb, didn't even breathe, paralysed by the clipped command like a lamb faced with the butcher's knife.

But at long last the fog clouding his brain lifted a bit, and his brain cells resumed their work. As a Working could be ruled out in the wake of the taming of the fae unless the sorcerer was willing to pay the ultimate price for it, a single man shouldn't pose much of a problem for a trained warrior. Theoretically. But maybe the 'man' was anything but. Grisly urban legends were still travelling from mouth to mouth, whispering in hushed tones of dark cults, human sacrifices and deadly creatures that had no name, but whose mere presence was sufficient to drive any sane human being crazy.

His speculations were interrupted by a malicious chuckle that didn't bode well. "You think you can fight me? You've got no chance in hell, but I'd love to see you try. And fail."

Damien swallowed convulsively. He had half expected to hear the smooth, utterly otherworldly light tenor haunting him in his delusions, but the voice mocking him was different, deeper and reassuringly human in its slight huskiness. Only the hauteur and arrogance oozing from every single syllable were the same.

He still hadn't quite decided what to make of the situation when the cold edge of a blade was pressed against the side of his neck. So whoever had ambushed him in that menacing anteroom of hell he had stumbled into like a goddamn idiot wasn't unarmed, a drawback that significantly reduced his chances to get out of this mess alive and in one piece. "What the hell do you want of me, you vulking son of a bitch?" he growled, masking dread with anger.

"Want of you? Why, you can do so many things for me, priest. You can bleed for me, or maybe scream a bit or beg me to stop hurting you. But let's save that for later, eh? As we have all the time in the world to enjoy ourselves, we can go easy for now and deal with your outward appearance first." In the blink of an eye, the low purr saturated with twisted pleasure turned into something unsettlingly akin to the hiss of a venomous snake preparing to sink its fangs into warm, living flesh. "Take of your pathetic rags! Instantly!"

When Vryce hesitated, the knife was pressed harder to his skin. Sudden, sharp pain bloomed in his neck, and he could feel a trickle of blood running down into the collar of his flannel shirt. Damn!

A slender arm slipped around his waist and pulled him into an unnerving perversion of the embrace of a lover. Hot breath ghosted over his skin, quickening with anticipation, and then the creature behind him started to lick up the red rivulets with a moan born from sheer delight.

Appalled by the revolting violation, Damien could barely suppress a gagging. Dear God Almighty, what kind of fiend was feeding on him? Maybe he was doomed to be sucked dry down to the very last drop by a faeborn vampire. Considering his attacker's appetites, the assumption was much too obvious for his peace of mind.

He shuddered at the thought, but the lips latching onto his skin weren't those of a monster but so very soft and warm, and something stirred deep down inside him that wasn't wholly abhorrence. Strange chimeras welled up from the fathomless abysses of his soul, notions of a much more frigid mouth working at his throat, of silver-flecked eyes glittering brighter than the morning star and white teeth so much sharper than a human being's had any right to be. The mere idea should have extinguished the spark of arousal flickering through his groin, but it didn't. Not by a long shot. To his utmost horror, his wayward body seemed to have developed a mind of its own, responded to the mental images in a fashion he wouldn't have expected in his wildest dreams, and there was nothing he could do against it.

After hovering between heaven and hell for what felt like a small eternity, the stranger suddenly released him and stepped back, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps. "This was but an appetizer," he whispered, his voice hoarse and strained as if he were struggling for words. "I will have more of your blood later. Much more. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Be so kind as to undress now. Your clothes are in the way."

"Dream on, nutcase!"

"My dreams are none of your concern, Vryce. With regard to the fact that I find unnecessary repetitions a bit tedious, you'd better keep your tongue in check and strip. Trust me that you won't appreciate it if I have to do it myself."

"Like hell I will, you sick bastard!" the warrior knight shot back. If he could provoke that pervert into making a mistake, he might be able to overpower him, knife or not. "Want me to do the dirty work for you? No way! If you need me naked, well, here I am."

Very much to his disappointment, his challenge was met with an amused snort. "You're  underestimating me again, as usual. But you will obey me, I can assure you. They all do in the end."

Surprisingly enough, the cold steel disappeared from his throat, but before he could take advantage of it, the unmistakable sound of a firearm being cocked nipped all thoughts of a quick counterstrike in the bud. No chance in hell to be faster than a bullet. He still preferred a sword or his springbolt, weapons requiring long hours of practice and a certain amount of talent. Any wretched mugger could kill with a gun. There was no honour in it, no pride.

_Yeah, keep telling yourself this bullshit, Damien,_ he thought sarcastically. _A fat lot of good your vulking honour will do you when the son of a bitch puts a .476  calibre through your stubborn head. It serves you right, though. Why the heck didn't you learn a lesson from... from..._?

Fleeting images of a sack of grain popped up in his mind, sitting right beside packages of dried food that would last a party of three at least a fortnight, a pile of knives and several small handguns. Long, ghostly pale fingers were handling one of the latter with delicate care, cleaning the metallic parts with the hooks and wire brushes they had collected until its new proprietor seemed satisfied with the result, while he himself was inspecting a larger, much more primitive weapon unlike anything he had ever seen before...

Vryce furrowed his brow. The scene unfolding before his inner eye struck a chord with him. He vaguely remembered feeling guilty as hell for robbing the dead and having a strange conversation about the limitations of his companion, but however much he was racking his brain, he could neither picture the man's face nor dredge up his name.

"Are you willing to indulge me now, or do you need an incentive first?  I could aim for your right knee. Or maybe the left one? Not that I want to hurt any of the vital parts. Not yet, anyway."

The words snapping him out of his fruitless musings were uttered in perfectly calm, cultivated tones strangely at odds with the transmitted message, rather more appropriate for having some small talk at a garden party than for bullying a victim into submission. But be that as it may, Damien didn't harbour a shadow of doubt that their speaker wasn't prone to wasting his breath on empty threats.

Although it came hard to him, he decided to play along, at least for a while. Getting shot, even if he received but a minor injury, wouldn't improve his situation but only serve to tip the scales further against him.

At last he was naked, shivering with a mixture of wrath and visceral terror. No human being should be forced to go through that kind of shit, being completely and utterly at the mercy of a deranged lunatic or worse. As matters stood, he seriously doubted that his antagonist was possessing a shred of it.

"That's a good boy", the stranger cooed, apparently revelling in his humiliation. "You've got the body of a true warrior, Vryce. Hunting delicate prey brings its own sweet rewards, but their endurance very often leaves a lot to be desired. I think you will please me for a long, long time." 

Damien flinched at the touch of bold fingers fondling his left biceps, testing the tone of his muscles in a way very much reminiscent of a horse trader checking the quality of the goods, but it was the naked hunger reverberating in the low voice that made his skin crawl with dread.

 "Now make yourself comfortable on the bed, on your stomach, if you don't mind. Oh, and don't forget to put on the handcuffs. We don't want you to be naughty, do we?"

His thoughts racing, he staggered over to the bed on wobbly legs. As soon as he was chained to the bedposts, he would be absolutely helpless, had to suffer whatever atrocities had been planned for him. With regard to the tools glinting ominously in the candlelight, he might very well beg for the coup de grace before the night was over. Warrior or not, if life had taught him one thing, it was the fact that you could break just anybody if you were 'persuasive' enough.

"Get going! I'm running out of patience."

Not for the first time that evening, Vryce considered a surprise attack and to hell with the consequences. He wasn't altogether keen on kicking the bucket, but a clean death by a well-aimed bullet surely was preferable to dying under torture in screaming agony. If he would be granted a clean death, that is. Having his patella shot to pieces was only marginally better than glowing pincers, as far as he was concerned.

In the end, he forced himself to wait for a better opportunity to put the fear of God into his opponent. After stretching out on silken sheets the colour of gore, he fiddled about with shaking fingers  until he finally managed to close the iron ring around his left wrist. His other hand was still free, though, and he verily intended to make the best of it. "So far, so good. But how the hell do you expect me to put on the second one of your little toys, hare brain?" he spat out. "If you take me for a contortionist from a freak show, I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you."

There was no answer to his deliberate provocation save a ripple of soft laughter drifting through the eerie twilight like a greeting from the beyond. It was coming closer, that much he could tell, but he could neither hear any footsteps on the numarble tiles, nor could he discern a, however faint, rustle of clothes. The absolute soundlessness of it all reminded him of an ambush predator on the prowl, and his doubts concerning his captor's humanity redoubled.

"Don't you worry, priest, I'm here to help you," his nemesis chuckled at long last, the biting sarcasm almost palpable. "But I'd rather you shut your eyes first. Defy me, and I'll make you regret the day you were born. Have I made myself clear?"

Gritting his teeth against the torrent of abuse trembling on the tip of his tongue, Damien obeyed. He hadn't seen a single hair of the creature who must have lain in wait for him like a spider in her web up to that point, but he was no fool. Although the better part of his past seemed to have been erased from his mind for whatever reason, he remembered that he was a Knight of the Order of the Golden Flame, an elite troop founded by King Gannon at the beginning of the Revival period. Trained in hand-to-hand combat since his late teens, he knew how to assess an enemy, even when the bastard was playing hide and seek with him. _Just step a little bit closer, half-pint, so that I can get my fingers around your scrawny neck_ , he thought grimly. _Then I'll teach you something about the 'strong body of a true warrior' you'll never forget. That's as sure as day follows night.  
_

The faint clangour of metal close by seemed to answer his prayers, but when he felt the pressure of what could only be a blasted muzzle against his temple, every flicker of hope was extinguished all too soon. Something cold and hard closed around his right wrist, clicked into place with a loud snap, and he was trapped. Crap! The son of a bitch had bested him again.

A cold sweat broke out all over Vryce's body, his terror increasing tenfold when his head was brutally yanked back by the hair and a blindfold slipped over his eyes. The sensory deprivation was worse than anything else, something his tormentor had doubtlessly taken into account. Whatever could be said about him, he knew his stuff.

The surge of naked panic speeding up his heartbeat to a fast drum roll was nigh to overwhelming, but losing his head wouldn't do him any good under the given circumstances. If a bondage version of blind man's bluff was on the agenda for tonight, so be it. He had other senses at his disposal, not to mention plenty of grey matter between his ears. For the time being, he had no choice but to roll with the punches, but the final chapter hadn't yet been written.

Taking several deep breaths in order to calm himself, Damien banished his fear of what was to come into the deepest recesses of his mind and pricked up his ears.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: torture and non-con in this chapter, but not all is what it seems to be...  
> Hi, Dragonflower! I'm sorry you had to wait for an update for such a long time. I'll try to change for the better ;-).

At first, Damien couldn't pick up much save a soft swish of silk and the sputtering of one of the manifold candles illuminating the chamber, but he almost jumped out of his skin when a vicious crack reverberated through the air all of a sudden. A whip! Not that he had ever doubted that his tormentor meant business, but having his worst suspicions confirmed was a debatable pleasure he could very well have done without.

Leather tickled a spot right between his shoulder blades, just to trail a line of fire down to his nether cheeks and back up to his torso again and again in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. The blood pounding in his temples, he braced himself for the first lash, but it didn't come. Instead, slender fingers started to comb through his hair, brushing the sweaty strands out of his face with almost maternal tenderness.

When the stranger leaned closer to place a gentle kiss on his forehead, a whiff of rare spices and not incense invaded Vryce's nostrils, exotic but yet so utterly familiar. As for himself, he preferred to stick to water and soap, but he knew the scent, knew that it cost a small fortune and was made by Jaggonath's top perfume manufacturer, exclusively for... for...

Suddenly the stranger's grip tightened, and Vryce's head was dragged back by his hair until he thought the bones of his neck would snap at any moment. "Now you are mine, priest", the faceless voice whispered, and Damien registered the glimmer of madness belying the calm tones. "Mine to do as I please, and right now I want to teach you a lesson on the pleasure of pain. You should have obeyed me right from the beginning. But you never chose the easy way, don't you?"

When the whip hit his back with a vengeance, Damien buried his teeth in his lower lip and held his breath. He wouldn't please that creep with his groans of pain. Not yet, anyway. But after a few lashes more, applied methodically and without any haste, he could feel the metallic taste of blood on his tongue, and his finger nails left deep crescents in his palms. Just when his endurance was beginning to wane, the lashes suddenly stopped, but he didn't fool himself into thinking that his ordeal was already over. No, that twisted son of a bitch certainly had something special in mind for him, the whipping being no more than an appetizer for the barbarous hunger of his torturer.

The eerie silence seemed to drag on for hours while Vryce waited helplessly for the next assault, grateful for the short reprieve that allowed him to catch his breath and steel himself for the resumption of his torment. But whatever he had expected hadn't prepared him for what felt like a huge pillow being shoved under his abdominal region without further ado, not to mention for the naked body straddling him straight afterwards. A hot tongue licked at him again, greedily sampling the unsavoury mixture of sweat and blood oozing from the gashes on his back. It burned like the fires of hell, and he squeezed his eyes shut, revolted beyond words.

"You taste so good, priest!" the stranger moaned into his right ear. "Just the right amount of sweet fear with a delectable pinch of resistance. It's so much more enjoyable to break obstinate prey. But let's not waste time with drivel."

Something hard and demanding pressed into the small of Damien's back, and he very nearly choked on his own breath when realization dawned on him. Dear God, that vulking psychopath was a sadist in the true sense of the word; sexually aroused by his suffering, he was just about to rape him!

No! Not that! Naked panic got the better of Vryce and drowned his capacity for rational thinking. Making use of his vast repertoire of profanities, he bucked and writhed in his shackles until his wrists were a bleeding mess, but to no avail. His nemesis allowed him to rage against his fate for a while, without a doubt taking unhealthy pleasure in his futile efforts, but at last the blade was pressed to the side of his neck again, a wordless, but very effective threat. Damien became still like death itself. "Damn you, you bastard. If this is over, and I still live, I'm going to kill you."

"You keep repeating yourself, priest." The stranger's voice was calm and controlled, giving nothing away, but the quickening of his breath and a slight tremor running through his wiry frame betrayed his anticipation of the things to come.

When something slick probed at his nether cheeks, demanding entrance, Damien gritted his teeth. He would survive what was to come, and he would make that abomination pay for his deeds, even if it was the last thing he'd ever do.

Very much to his amazement, the violation of his most private place didn't hurt as much as he had feared. The thrusts were slow and careful at first, kindling something that wasn't entirely abhorrence. But all too soon they picked up the pace, became harder and harder by the second, and the small spark of forbidden lust he'd never admit to anyone was extinguished in a burning inferno. The low whimpers he couldn't suppress turned into a full-blown yelp when sharp teeth mercilessly buried themselves in the nape of his neck, surely drawing blood. His own exclamation mingled with the triumphant outcry of his defiler whose body convulsed against his back in long, shuddering spasms while his nails left angry red scratches on Damien's shoulders. Then the lights went out for him, but the last thing he heard before oblivion claimed him might have been his name.

 


End file.
